Health officials are reporting that a patient was infected with the AIDS virus through a kidney transplant from a live donor.They are calling it the first confirmed instance of HIV spreading through an organ transplant from a live donor since routine laboratory screening of donors began in the 1980s.It happened in New York City in 2009, but New York City health officials said Thursday that they only learned of the case late last year.The male donor had been tested for HIV about 10 weeks before he donated a kidney. Health officials believe he was infected in the time between that test and the surgery.No other details about the donor or recipient were released. Health officials say both are alive and receiving HIV treatment.

In a way it could be good. HIV naturally kills the ability of antibodies to fight diseases, the same antibodies that also attack organs and lead to life long immunosuppression.Something might be learnt about harnessing HIV , just as we have learnt to harness radiation to kill cancer, snake venom in stroke and heart ailments , etc medicines.Listen to this from WIRED: Scientists have used gene therapy to halt the progression of adrenoleukodystrophy, a fatal neurodegenerative disease caused by a single defective gene, in two seven-year-old boys.

The new vector, called a lentivirus, didnâ??t work all the time, but it was far more efficient than the old one. In the two boys who received the treatment, 15 percent of the stem cells in their bone marrow now possess a copy of the healthy ABCD1 gene. These cells are essentially immortal, and should provide a steady supply of healthy myelin-producing cells in perpetuity.Ignorance and Fear of unknown are the worst enemy. It must be time to start looking at HIV as a totally different aspect to see how to control and use it to solve other problems.